Economically, inflation was cured in 1924 and never was to return. Stresemann and Schacht introduced a temporary currency called the Rentenmark which was based on a mortgage of Germany’s entire industrial and agricultural resources. This brought up the confidence of the German people as hyper-inflation was one of the major problems in 1923, therefore getting rid of it was a huge success. Reparations were reorganized on a more reasonable level in the Dawes Plan and later the Young plan which made it easier for the economy to start to regain itself and also continue paying off reparations. By 1929 production was back to 1913 levels where there was of course a lot of production as it was during the First World War which looked promising. Overall the economy was shaping and rising up making the stability of the government stable and strong.
Yet even though the reparations were reorganized, they still caused a great national resentment as the Germans thought they were being unfairly treated as soon as the treaty of Versailles were brought out (hence the ‘passive resistance’ and refusal of paying the reparations in the Ruhr when the French and Belgians invaded) and with national disturbance means a government disturbance. The economy was still reliant and heavily dependent on the short-term American loans which was very dangerous in the sense that if America ever got into trouble (which it did in 1929), when America falls, so would Germany. Even though the production levels were increasing, Germany was still lagging behind all the other countries which made the nation feel that they were not progressing blaming it on the republic. Unemployment remained around 1 million because of the sacking of workers to try and get the economy in control as with les workers it meant less money to give them for their work. This of course had a drastic effect on the unemployed as without a job there was no way of supporting their family as there was no financial security. These unemployed, struggling people would then vote for a party who said they would get everybody a job hence voting for the NSDAP (the right wing) which went against the republic causing instability within the government as more anti-Weimar parties were slowly being voted in which caused unrest in the government resulting in instability.
Socially the welfare extended meaning the working class made gains as in November 1918; workers won agreement from employers to an 8-hour working day and a system of industrial tribunals. This was a massive achievement as before workers had no say on how long they worked and how much money they would get; they would work long hours and get paid hardly the right amount for the amount of hours they worked. These gave them a voice making them feel they were finaly part of the nation and were not only just ‘the working class.’ Advances were made in social services. Improvement in hospitals, electricity supplies, and 40% of federal government expenditure went on war-related pensions to invalids, widows and orphans; in all 2.5 million people. A further major advance in welfare provision was made in 1927 when the social insurance scheme was extended to protect over 17 million workers in event of unemployment. All these advances strengthened the support amongst the Germans, They felt that there nation was progressing and that the Republic was doing a good job in the sense of listening to the people. Weimar culture was very significant as it contained artistic forms that were greatly to influence later cultural development and reflected new optimism, democratization, and challenge to tradition, excitement and modernism on the period. If this ‘experimentation’ happened at any other time then it would.ve been worse for the government so with recovering they could tackle the cultural aspects of Germany, proving its stability, yet some politicians see it differently…
On the other hand social welfare alienated powerful groups in the elite and aroused expectations that could not be met. They felt that the expectations were exaggerated and the demands on the welfare could not be met, feeling it was wrong to put up the hopes of man people (especially the working class). This, of course, affected the elite’s attitude towards the republic as resulting high taxation and comparative redistribution of resources away from the elite reinforced its suspicions of a new democratic system. With having suspicions along the government, how could the government be stable enough if the elites didn’t trust the republic and didn’t believe they could achieve what they set out to do in the start? But it was true the competing demands on welfare could not be met even before the slump ruined the economy. The Weimar Republic was an over-strained welfare state as the economic growth of the recovery period was insufficient to meet growing aspirations and served to retard industrial advance, and to increase the elite’s alienations from the new democratic scheme. Some could enjoy and appreciate the cultural experimentation but most Germans were horrified by what they saw as the decline in established moral and cultural standards. It has also been suggested that the Weimar culture never established a genuinely tolerant attitude. The avant garde and the conservatives were clearly at odds with each other and both sides took advantage of the freedoms and permissiveness of Weimar liberalism to criticize it while not being genuinely tolerant or sympathetic towards each other. Weimar society was becoming increasingly polarized before the onset of the political and economic crisis in 1929 and reinforced their hostility to the regime which proved Germany was instable and could not manage this change in Germany.
It is apparent that whilst in comparison to the turbulent years of 1919-23 the mid to late 1920s did not provide the depth of stability the Republic needed to survive the severe economic and political conditions of the early 1930s. Economic recovery simply was not good enough and lacked the structural integrity to withstand recession whilst Germany itself through its extensive loans with America was too exposed to the collapse of the American economy. Politically, the Weimar republic had been hampered by a variety of relatively weak coalition governments. Whilst there might have been support for the Republic there was no real love for it among the German people and this was shown in the election of the traditional president, General Hindenburg, in 1925 and again in 1932. When the republic faced a real crisis the support for it too easily dissipated and suggests that the stability the republic enjoyed in the mid-late 1920s was superficial despite the work of Stresemann in restoring Germany to the diplomatic fold.
